And another question, how do you handle a breakup?
And I'm, I'm not sure what kind of, what kind of breakup, whether this is a divorce or whether, um, the child's experiencing, you know, their, a breakup of a—
Uh, a breakup in, in a child's life might be parent's divorce.
Uh, and, and so in that situation, I'll just start there, and then we'll go a couple different scenarios with a child.
If parents are divorcing, we want to make sure that first and foremost, the child knows that they're loved, that it's not their fault.
And we also want them to know that we are going to do our best to create love and safety for them, and we wanna create as much stability for them as possible.
So if the breakup is mom and dad's divorce, we still want to keep the child in as much of a similar environment as we possibly can.
For example, uh, living in the same home, if it's possible, uh, going to the same school, having similar friends—that's better for the child.
So they're making less adaptation after a breakup or a divorce than, say, their parents.
So we want as much stabilization in the child's life as possible.
That may not be possible for financial reasons, but we still want to make sure that they're interacting with people who are safe to them.
That's really important.
Now, that's one example of a breakup.
If it's a—it's teenagers breaking up, and my teenager's breaking up with a girl or a boy, or whatever the situation may be, we wanna give them a space to talk.
We wanna give them a chance to be open and have a conversation with us so they feel like they can open up and talk with us at any time.
So that, that's a starting point because, in reality, um, a breakup can be very heart-crushing.
And teaching our child how to give a voice to it, talk about it, um, talk about their thoughts or what they're experiencing can be very, very, very helpful for them.
So they don't just internalize it—"They don't like me"—and then, uh, maybe come to a conclusion that people won't like me.
So we wanna be careful of beliefs that people form about themselves as a result of any breakup.
What did you come to believe about yourself as a result of the breakup?
And that's where, as a parent, I would wanna be there for them.
